Young Barbara Bush Backs Gay Marriage

Former President George W. Bush's daughter Barbara is the latest relative of a prominent Republican to support gay marriage.

In May, her mother, Laura Bush, gave this answer to a question about gay marriage: "When couples are committed to each other and love each other, that they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has."

John McCain's daughter, Meghan, supports gay marriage, though her father's against it, and the lesbian daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney supports it too. Gay rights leaders have seized on the generational split as a sign that support for same-sex marriage can come from either party.

Breaking ranks with her father, Barbara Bush taped a short video supporting the push to legalize gay marriage in New York.

"I am Barbara Bush, and I am a New Yorker for marriage equality," the 29-year-old Manhattan resident says in the video on the Human Rights Campaign website. "New York is about fairness and equality. And everyone should have the right to marry the person that they love. Join us."

As president, her father supported a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

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A Yale graduate, Barbara Bush has started a global health nonprofit group and rarely speaks on public issues. Friends tell The New York Times she was surrounded by gay students at Yale and in the New York City design world in which she worked.

The gay rights group that made the video plans to show it at a party in New York on Saturday.

"No matter what party they belong to, young Americans believe in basic fairness and equality," Brian Ellner, who is overseeing the Human Rights Campaign's bid for same-sex marriage in New York, told the Times.